Feb. 5, 2014
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by Olivia Barker, USA TODAY

by Olivia Barker, USA TODAY

Singer/guitarist/artist Elijah Blue Allman, the son of Cher and Gregg Allman, has opened up about his well-known addictions - including heroin.

"I started with drugs (weed and ecstasy) around the same time that we all did, around 11," Allman, 37, told Entertainment Tonight. "I mean, it's just what you did, it's just what everybody did." Indeed, his dad was an infamous abuser.

Looking to escape his past, "that's when you turn to those kind of drugs, you know, heroin and opiates," the younger Allman said. The former "kind of saved me ‚?¶If I didn't have that at that point, I don't know what I would have done ‚?¶You may jump off a bridge. If you can only just go through that time period and live through it and then get help."

Allman revealed that when it came to overdosing, he "did have some close calls and some moments of really feeling at the edge of mortality‚?¶ I always kind of kept it a little bit safe, but you never can do that. Even though you think that in your mind, of course, the wrong things can happen. The wrong combination of things can happen, and you can just slip into the abyss. I knew it was wrong, and I knew that I was very unsatisfied with life at that point."